Jean-Louis Deniot: Interiors

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The French interior designer and architect Jean-Louis Deniot. Top: In the Paris apartment of an avid art collector, Nude and Cactus by Antony Williams hangs to the left of the fireplace. The 1960s chandelier is by Venini. All photos by Xavier Bejot, courtesy of Rizzoli The mural makes the original architecture all but disappear, opening up the confined space into something that feels limitless and boundless,” Deniot says of the Mathias Kiss painting he commissioned for the walls of the staircase. Inspired by stormy Parisian skies, the mural, Deniot continues, is “a poetic way to bring guests up to their private quarters.” Indoors, shared amenities are created for tenants to enjoy time alone as much as with friends and family. The standout for Jean-Louis Deniot is the 82-foot Starlight Pool that overlooks Park Avenue in a double-height space on the 18th floor. A first for the hotel, the pool occupies a former ballroom and features a blue-and-white-porcelain-inspired colour palette that subtly nods to the current owner, China’s Dajia Insurance Group (formerly Anbang Insurance Group). The Presidential Library nods to the hotel’s history of hosting American dignitaries. The Grand Salon is the residences’ main space for entertaining. Jean-Louis Deniot is no stranger to the spotlight when it comes to interior design. His emblematic interiors reflect a strong character, blending textures and styles to create a compelling atmosphere. Today, we will dive into the story and projects of this fascinating interior designer and understand how he combines rigorous analytical training with a natural sense of aesthetics. I always want to get as far as possible from the white box. My interiors are about atmosphere, character, texture, and a sense of harmony.”

A great enthusiast of iconic designs, his decors feature no shortage of arresting materials and textures tempered with subtle color palettes, muted tones and impeccable lighting. At the crossroads between classical terminology and contemporary aesthetics, Jean-Louis Deniot’s interiors are serene, elegant and dramatic as awash with nods to other time periods, yet never typical or literal. In addition, I placed sculptures and ceramics on the rooms’ armoires, which I designed as traveling trunks, giving the impression that the pieces displayed on top came straight to Paris as souvenirs gathered on trips to South Africa, Greece and Japan, just as they might have in a private home rather than a hotel. That being said, Jean-Louis Deniot hardly plays it safe. Aspiring for New Yorkers to find renewed pride in the Waldorf Astoria, he injected the residences with a distinct point of view that embraces unique colour stories and finishes. A rendering of one of the residences. One of the marble-filled bathrooms.

The Devilish Detail

Jean-Louis Deniot has also earned recognition for the furniture and lighting collections in collaboration with Jean de Merry, George Smith, Collection Pierre, Pouenat, Bronze d’Art Français and more recently Marc de Berny with the Sparkx Collection. All his bespoke lines are designed in the continuity and respect of each brand’s personality and style yet replete with forward-thinkingness and savory twists. Jean-Louis Deniot’s new monograph, Destinations ( Rizzoli), highlights 18 of his projects from around the world, including his offices in Paris, a triplex in Bangkok and a villa in Miami Beach (portrait is by Sophie Delaporte). Top: The living room of this villa in Corsica includes a pair of Vladimir Kagan sofas and a trio of custom coffee tables by Deniot. The artwork over the sofas is by Bharti Kher, who created it using bindis. The space also includes a Poul Kjaerholm PK24 chaise longue and a 1950s chandelier by Austrian designer Oswald Haerdtl. In the 18th-century farmhouse in Touraine, France, that Deniot shares with his sister and business partner, Virginie Deniot, the Napolean III leather club chairs are from the Clignancourt flea market, in Paris, and the blue-and-white mirror was given to the siblings by their grandmother. 1. Apart from the great European decorators and designers you mention in your book — Henri Samuel, Jean-Michel Frank and Alberto Pinto — who out there inspires you? Any Americans?

Probably 1920s France because I truly love the period. Industry was in complete effervescence then. I certainly would have traveled to Austria, London and New York to partake in the global and glorious synergy of the era. Surely, I would have been great in Les Années folles! 5. You travel between many places, where would you like to work or live next? Deniot is known for layering—art and furniture from different periods, custom-made pieces with one-of-a-kind antiques—with inviting harmony and elegance. Deniot’s timeless and glamorous rooms possess an almost cinematic aesthetic without being either too formal or trendy. New ceilings in the dining room and master bedroom were based on the existing architecture. Throughout the home, Deniot deployed materials such as textured plaster, hand-chiseled stone, brushed and stained wood, and large oak planks that mimic the original floors. “My rule of thumb is that it’s OK to be eclectic in terms of furnishings; however, architecturally the vocabulary needs to be one single language,” the designer avers.Jean-Louis Deniot have had a passion for interiors since he was a small child. His first experiences with design came very early on. He started drawing and painting at the age of three and progressed to making models of miniature architecture structures and interior decors by the age of ten. J.L.Deniot experimented with many different styles such as colonial, art deco, French country, contemporary Californian, Indian, Parisian… His parents have saved some of them. At the age of twelve, he understood that I was destined to do interior design and architecture for a living. It was very clear to him. Today, each project that he do is like a first time design experience. I believe that eclecticism is the basis of convivial decoration, allowing a room to give an impression of spontaneity and naturalness. The ambience of the dining room, for example, owes much to its mix of mid-century furniture from Italy, France and the United States. In the lobby, I placed a sofa inspired by a Californian piece from the 1950s next to chairs by the Czech designer Jindřich Halabala from the 1930s. Parisian apartments have unique architectural details, you can see in the projects below that the french interior designer, Jean-Louis Deniot, respects and emphasise the beauty and the uniqueness of those details and add his special touch. Rue de Rivoli Rue de Rivoli Project Everything has been treated with dark finishes to immerse the visitor instantly in an atmosphere that remains rigorously the same both day and night. I borrowed my palette from the colors of the Parisian sky at dusk, with rich, moody tones of gray, blue and green. August 7, 2017At Paris’s recently opened 45-room Nolinski hotel, French architect and interior designer Jean-Louis Deniot (above) reimagined a former office building as a fantastical place to spend the night. Top: A spiraling central staircase brings guests up to their rooms from the hotel’s ground floor public salons. All photos by David Oliver, unless otherwise noted

In the salon, a bronze table by Ado Chale is topped with 19th-century Etruscan pieces and a Wedgwood urn, and a pair of Louis XVI chairs are covered in a Zimmer & Rohde velvet; the 17th-century giltwood mirror is flanked by bronze Empire sconces, the Sputnik-style chandelier is from the 1950s, the rug is Moroccan, and the wall panels are painted in Stonington Gray by Benjamin Moore. Pascal Chevallier

Ingrid Abramovitch et Michael Boodro, Elle Decor: The Height of Style, Abrams, 2014, p.35, 36, 94, 100, 158, ISBN 978-1419709920 Search this book on .. A great enthusiast of iconic designs, his decors feature no shortage of arresting materials and textures tempered with subtle color palettes, muted tones and impeccable lighting. At the crossroads between classical terminology and contemporary aesthetics, Jean-Louis Deniot’s interiors are serene, elegant and dramatic as awash with nods to other time periods, yet never typical or literal. With an ambitious list of locales that resembles the index of an atlas, a few current Jean-Louis Deniot projects include private homes in Beverly Hills and San Francisco, townhouses on New York’s Upper East Side, a 57 story residential tower on Biscayne Bay in Miami, a large-scale home on private landscaped grounds in London, houses on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar in Tarifa and Tangiers, a stupendous city duplex and a spacious country home in Moscow, private homes in New Delhi and Chandigarh, India, family residences on Hong Kong Bay and in Bangkok, the brand new Hotel Nolinski on Paris’ Avenue de l’Opéra, and private residences in Paris’ most sought-after neighborhoods. Adventurous by nature, Jean-Louis Deniot undertakes each project with the vigor and inquisitive nature particular to true visionaries, conceiving and defining novel design aesthetics with nuance and confidence.